As I have briefly touched on before, I am continually amazed by how many of my peers completely ignore or are completely ignorant of class. For my generation (and those that have followed) it is de rigueur to ascribe certain qualities of your personality or certain external events in your life to different aspects of your identity. Decades of misinformation (and downright propaganda) from our media (and larger culture) have rendered class invisible, a perceived irrelevance. It is not to be mentioned in polite company and speaking about it passionately and intelligently instantly marks you out as, at best, a naive relic (while it is not often verbalised, it’s clear that, at worse, mentioning class sees you painted as hopelessly bitter.) Even much of ‘the left’ will respond to its mention by trotting out that ever more meaningless insult, ‘Trot’.

Cultural theory, largely removed from any economic realm, is what’s fashionable these days. I use the phrase ‘fashionable’ deliberately as it is a grim irony that the worlds of media, marketing and fashion have been at the forefront of capitalist society’s efforts to strip the economic from the political and replace it with a post-modern sense that all is vanity. To speak to someone who works in these fields is typically to find someone who staggeringly believes that their work is beyond politics and their success is entirely down to their own qualities. Indeed, these industries thrive on pushing the notion that anyone can make it if they try. That we are the Kings and Queens of our own fates and our success or failure depends entirely on our personal efforts. There is, of course, absolutely no place for class in this narrative. No place for power, even for politics itself. Contact with the outside world will express itself as a series of fringe identity issues, for example ‘compassionate consumerism’ wherein ineffectual hand-wringing about sweatshops identifies you as someone who cares.

Mention of a ‘class war’ is, then, completely beyond the pale. It is no exaggeration that proposing this possibility generally results in your instant dismissal as a crazy person. A class war suggests one class using its power to protect or advance its position at the expense of another and how could this be in a world free of class?

Yet if we are to accept that class isn’t real we need different explanations as to why so much of our society is intrinsically linked to income (which plays a huge, but not solitary, role in class). As the first column linked to above indicates, educational attainment is still closely linked to class. This follows through into professional jobs, our legal system, our government, all areas where the higher income brackets are hopelessly over-represented. Lower income families account for a hugely out-of-proportion number of those in prison. A recent report linked the UK riots with deprivation. Obviously I am rattling through and simplifying here but the blunt links are there and undeniable. Social mobility is at a standstill and for every person who, against the odds, ‘escapes’ from their background there are countless more who do not, who cannot, who don’t even begin to think that they can.

So yes, I believe that class is real and, in a country where inequality is reaching levels worse than it has ever been it is more relevant than ever. Labour’s record on inequality wasn’t great by any means but, on the whole, it decreased poverty even while failing to tackle the rich becoming ever richer and ever more disconnected from society. Today we have a government which is actively redistributing wealth away from the poorto pay for more PFI (an expensive means of moving wealth from taxpayers into concentrated, private hands), ‘free schools’ and further subsidies for banks and businesses which are steadfastly failing to play their part in the coalition fantasy of the private sector rushing to the aid of the economy (after the state bailouts which prevented worldwide depression, you’d think they’d return the favour). This comes in seven days where the government announced its plans to tackle youth unemployment and the housing bubble by subsidising low wage employers and hawkish landlords. The Treasury’s own figures anticipate today’s policies pushing 100,000 further children into poverty. Unemployment is predicted to rise above the dreaded figure of 3 million, not seen since the dark days of Thatcher. Poverty in general is predicted to rise by millions in the next decade.

As you can see in this chart, a swift analysis of today’s measures saw the top income decile being affected most. However, this was largely due to Labour’s 50p tax rate which the government has several times indicated it wishes to scrap. Remove this from the picture and the changes are completely regressive, with the poorest being hit hardest (and, in any case, clearly a decline in net income of 1.5% affects the poorest far more than a decline of 2% affects the richest). Note that the curve rises upwards from the poorest so that the middle-classes are the least ‘hit’. This is classic class politics. The token gesture of hitting the richest by a few more fractions of a percentile enables the government to trumpet that everyone is ‘in it together’. Hitting the middle-class least protects their vote; even more so if the blame for it can be diverted to those who are being hit hardest. So it was that the government announced a headline benefits rise of over 5%. Cue many outraged comments that the feckless were being ‘rewarded’ for doing nothing while workers were being penalised. Of course the reality is that both groups are worse-off and those on benefits are hit harder in other ways, but many people won’t look beyond the headlines to realise this and their anger is directed away from those in power.

All of this is done under the guise of reducing a ‘deficit’ that was caused by a mendacious and greedy financial sector with the help of cowardly politicians (and anyone who still believes the lie that it was due to public spending should read this and this). Yet these people continue to accumulate wealth while public sector workers are given real term double-digit pay cuts and the government ‘consults’ on destroying further employment rights (the UK already suffers some of the worst employment rights in Europe). And the deficit is getting bigger! The political manipulation on display is breathtaking.

You can see it too in the pensions dispute. The government’s own report anticipated public sector pension costs peaking around 2026 and then declining. Even at its peak, the cost never hits 2% of GDP. There has already been significant reform of public sector pensions over the past 15 years which has reduced their cost. Yet the government pushes the myth of an out-of-control pension bill and an intransigent, greedy public sector determined to hold onto unfair, outdated arrangements. Again, they play ordinary workers off against each other – rather than ask why their own pensions are so derisory, private sector workers are led to believe that dinner ladies are looking forward to living it up at their expense. It’s a myth that falls apart very quickly but in the face of a media largely owned by billionaire oligarchs, it is one that is rarely challenged. No wonder when, as I’ve noted above, our society is so geared towards the supremacy of individual effort? The guy in marketing earning £30,000 a year, he earned it. If a nurse is seeing her pay cut in real terms it’s probably her fault for not finding another job, right?

It is difficult not to believe that we are seeing a class war. The government refuses to countenance a Tobin tax or anything other than mild reform of the financial sector. The interests of those who caused, and benefited from, the financial crisis continue to be protected. Today has been the clearest indicator yet that the government is not only failing the majority of the country but actively attacking them and their interests, all under the guise of tackling a deficit that they are actually increasing.

Tomorrow sees the biggest strike in the UK in several generations. Everyone who cares about this country, who believes that it should be a fairer place with a sense of justice, should support it. We need to recognise our common enemy, neatly encapsulated in recent months in the term ‘the 1%’. This government is ensuring that your class, and your children’s class, will matter more than ever when it comes to dictating their lives. We need to recognise this, which means accepting the reality of class and the logic of class interests. It means accepting that there is such a thing as society and it plays a part in where we all end up in our lives. It means accepting that our individual effort only goes so far and our common destiny is far more important. This is the only way we can begin to even move towards a world where class truly does not matter.